


Pick Out the Human from the Beast

by maqcy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Capture, Cyan trying not to eat people, Demons, Gen, Hurt, Multi, Pain, against nature, bad humans, cell - Freeform, instinct defying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 14:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6427333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maqcy/pseuds/maqcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being locked in a cell with a half-starved demon seems like a death sentence, but Cyan's never been one for doing what's expected of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pick Out the Human from the Beast

“Don’t lock me in there with it!” The man pleaded, fighting the soldiers as they pushed him forwards into the demon’s cell, “I can be useful to you!” The demon moved himself back against the cell wall, his chains clicking, watching as the man broke down, “Don’t do this, please, it’ll kill me, it’ll kill me, I don’t want to die-” One soldier gave him a hard shove and the man fell back, cracking his head. The soldier bent down and ran his knife across the man’s arm, just above his bound wrists,

“That’ll get things started,” the soldier said, he and his partner retreating to roll the heavy metal door closed behind them, locking it. The demon heard the muffled command ‘release’ from the far side of the wall and then his magnetic cuffs split open, freeing him for the first time since he’d been put in here. It had been a while.

Just as the metal fell off him, the demon caught the first scent of the man’s blood and he closed his eyes. He heard laughter and men calling out, saying ‘here we go’ as if the lights had just gone down in a cinema. The demon looked up at the camera in the corner and growled, letting red leak into his eyes. The answering laughter infuriated him, ‘the new one’s feisty’, and he sprang towards it, tearing the lens out of the wall with his claws. The laughter turned to groans as the soldiers muttered curses at him; denied their bloody entertainment.

The demon heard the man move behind him and he turned slowly to look over his shoulder. The man stared back at him, frozen, seeing what he thought would be his death, stood before him.

The man whimpered, a prisoner sentenced to death at the demon’s hands, or claws, or teeth, and the demon retreated, going to sit in the corner diagonal to the man. The stench of blood was growing, seeping out of the man’s wrists, though he’d had the presence of mind to wrap the cuts in his sleeves. The demon lost focus and choked, bringing his arm to his face as he sprung to his feet. 

He heard men muttering in approval, sullenly pleased the prisoner was still alive, that the demon hadn’t killed him before they could reboot their video feed. They must have another camera in here, an emergency one.

The demon began to pace, moving up and down the wall in an attempt to distract himself, struggling with the insistent pull in his chest that was making his eyes water and his breathing catch. He glanced at the man to find him staring back. The demon twisted around,

“Stop the bleeding.” He snapped, keeping his bare arm to his face. The man didn’t move, just stared, and the demon saw blood drip onto the floor, “Stop the bleeding!” He barked again and the man jumped, startled into motion,

“Yes, yes, I will, alright- I’m trying.” Despite the man’s efforts, the demon could feel the pull getting stronger, the loose cord linking them being tightened, the pull in his chest becoming painful, insistent. His weakened strength and thick head reminded him that he hadn’t fed in so long. 

The demon groaned, crouching down in the corner with his forehead resting on the cold concrete, cooling the fiery heat radiating out of him,

“Are- are you trying to resist?” The man’s voice was small, tentative, like a child’s. The demon ground out an answer,

“Yes.” He braced his palms against the wall, feeling the cold seep into him before he punched the wall and broke something in his hand, letting the pain distract him as he stood up and started pacing back and forth, back and forth. 

The man had staunched most of the blood flow but still, the scent of it, the promise in the air of more, hung there as heavy as the perfume of a dead lover, awaking the same feverish longing, a need that was far more potent than mere desire.

“How long can you- hold off for?” The demon forced his mind to focus, running the man’s question through his mind,

“The longest was-” he broke off, struggling for a moment, curling his fingers to focus on the pain in his throbbing hand, “a week. There was-” he broke off again, concentrating on not throwing himself at the man, tearing him apart, “a girl. More blood but,” he caught his breath painfully, choking on the sticky air, pausing to drive his fist into the wall, the nauseating pain making his vision sharper and taking his brain off his stomach, “the space was larger and I was-” he paused for just a second before finishing, “stronger.” The man was silent and the demon found his mind latching onto the blood, the smell of it, the memory of the feel of it, of meat and blood, muscle and skin- “Keep talking,” he managed hoarsely, “distract me. Please.” The man stuttered for a moment,

“I’m Jake,” he said, 

“Cyan.”

“What?” the demon glanced over at the huddled man, his bloodied wrists thankfully no longer visible, shrouded best he could under his shirt,

“My name. It’s Cyan.” The demon heard muttering from the other side of the wall. The soldiers were impatient, displeased. He heard one man ask incredulously whether they were ‘talking’ in the same tone he might use about a dog talking. The demon guessed they couldn’t hear what was being said,

“Oh.” The man drew him back to the cell and the demon lashed out at the wall with his foot, hard enough to bruise. He saw the man flinch,

“Talk.” He spat,

“Okay, alright, alright, I’ll talk about myself then? I’m twenty four next month, fourth of June. Born in Lisden. My dad’s an engineer here, down in the deep, my mum’s out working on an oil rig in the southern seas somewhere with her new partner. Realised she’d rather be with a woman called Lissie than my dad and took off when I was ten. She’s alright though, nice enough, I guess.” He tailed off for a moment, “I dunno, where are your parents?”

“Dead.” The demon pushed himself to add, “Got some family alive somewhere. Far as I know-” He broke off, muscle in his jaw twitching. The man waited, “I can’t say who, or where. Case they’re listening.”

“That’s- that’s hard. I-I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’m sorry. Honestly.” For a moment there was just the sound of their breathing, the demon’s; short and shallow, the man’s; looser and heavier, along with the sound of the demon’s bare feet pacing, claws clicking on the floor, “It’s bloody freezing in here.” The man muttered. The demon put his hands on the far wall and focused on lifting his temperature for a moment, emitting a wave of heated air, but it sucked at his depleted energy levels and he cut it off. Usually he could sustain the heat for over a minute, with some flashy looking flaming hands as well. “Was that you?” The man asked, looking over at him, cheeks suddenly flushed, “That’s…amazing.” The demon didn’t acknowledge him and he saw the man nod slightly, readjusting his position, “You want me to keep talking?” The demon jerked a nod,

“Okay, well, I got put in here because I found out something I shouldn’t have. I guess you got captured?” The demon nodded. There was more of a story to that but though the man paused, he didn’t ask, “My dad’ll go crazy when he finds out.” The man’s voice was quieter but with the dead quiet of the cell, his words were clear, “He gets scared of being alone. We were always close. First time I realised how much I meant to him was when I came home late and the police were there. I was only a couple of hours or so late but there were twenty-four missed calls on my phone, which I’d had off for the movie, and he’d seen how dark it’d gotten outside and heard on the news about a loose demon or something, a sighting, a myth, nothing concrete. He’d been frantic, though. ‘Nine, he kept saying, ‘you said you’d be home by nine.’” The man coughed and cleared his throat, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Never knew my parents.” The demon said. The man watched him silently, the beast prowling back and forth, his sharp face not animalistic but not human either. The proportions weren’t human, the angles different, his skin a shade that was so white it was almost blue, like ice, or a very light purple. There was beauty there, but it was deadly, the strength in his taut, bare torso, enough to snap a man’s spine, enough to bring down a tiger. “Brought up by…another family.” The man said nothing, just listened. “We didn’t start moving around till-” A short breath, “Till I was old enough to hold a gun- old enough to control my claws- old enough to kill to defend us.” 

“How- why- did you learn,” the man paused, “this. This restraint.” 

“I had a friend, like a sister,- who was half human. Didn’t live with us.” The demon was frowning, still pacing, and the man looked at him and tried to see past the alien outside, consciously tried to pick out the human from the beast. The demon kept talking, albeit stiltedly, “I can say because- she’s dead now.” There was a crease between the demon’s eyebrows, a shudder as he heard the scream of a girl that wasn’t there, “Her mother- was raped, almost died- but didn’t. Gave birth to- Hannah. She knew the child wasn’t human but-” The demon grimaced, “she loved the girl. Hannah- she found me. She-” a heavy breath, a glance towards the man sat listening, “felt the pull of killing, of blood but her human- the human in her helped her control it and- and she had a human mother she- loved. She didn’t teach me exactly- but- she suggested it, opened me up to the idea and I- I managed it sometimes. It was practical- sometimes, control, saved my life- she saved my life, several times.” The soldier’s voices distracted the demon and he paused, listening,

“What?” The man asked, “What can you hear?”

“Them. Talking.” He resumed pacing but the man could tell he was listening, “They’re annoyed. They want me to kill you.” 

“Why haven’t you?” The man said. Jake, the demon reminded himself. The man was called Jake. He had a name. Jake had a mother out on the sea and a father who needed him alive.

“You’re too skinny. Not very tasty.” Jake stared at the demon before barking out a surprised laugh and the demon managed a weary smile,

“Well, good. You keeping thinking that way, Cyan.”

**Author's Note:**

> I might as well just copy in what I said on my other one shots because the message is the same:  
> \- This was a one off thing so I probably won't update but...  
> \- If you do have any prompts for where you'd like this to go let me know and....  
> \- Kudos and comments would, of course, be happily received.


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